Statistics Canada has released a new study showing the Gender Wage Gap (GWG) for all women in Canada, depending on their citizenship or immigration status.
The GWG is the difference in hourly earnings between Canadian-born men and women working in similar jobs. The study also included immigrant men and women in this wage comparison. To calculate the GWG, Statistics Canada looked at differences in full-time and part-time earnings across the wage distribution (from low to high earnings positions) and between immigrant women who arrived in Canada as adults and those who arrived as children.
Overall, immigrant women who landed in Canada as children narrowed their gap with Canadian-born men from 14.7 per cent in 2007 to 10.5 per cent in 2022. Immigrant women who landed in Canada as adults narrow their gap with Canadian-born men from 27.4% in 2007 to 20.9% in 2022.
Canadian-born women will have a gap of 9.2% with Canadian men in 2022. This is down from 15% in 2007.
Immigrant men were found to have almost eliminated the gap between themselves and Canadian-born men.
Low vs. high wage distribution
Immigrant women in lower positions on the wage distribution have seen an improvement in closing the GWG, while those in higher positions on the hourly wage distribution have not seen an improvement in the GWG since 2007.
For example, immigrant women with a lower pay distribution who landed as adults reduced their pay gap by 13.7 percentage points from 20.0% in 2007 to 6.3% in 2022.
However, for those at the top of the earnings distribution, there was little change between 2007 and 2022, at 20.1%. Immigrant women who arrived as children and worked at the top of the pay distribution had a gap of 11.3%.
GWG is also affected by age. The study notes that there has been an improvement for immigrant women between the ages of 25 and 29 who arrived in Canada as adults. The difference has changed from 30.5 per cent in 2007 to 12.0 per cent in 2022.
Immigrant women in the Canadian labour force
According to Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey, 26.1% of immigrant women who arrived in Canada as adults worked in professional occupations.
In general, immigrant women in Canada’s labour force, particularly racialized women, have traditionally been overrepresented in lower-wage occupations such as accommodation and food services or hospitality.
Data from the August 2023 Labour Force Survey show that female workers (6.2%) are more likely than men (4.7%) to hold multiple jobs, as are immigrants who arrived in Canada less than 10 years ago (6.9%). This means that recent immigrants are the most likely to be multiple job holders.
Women less likely to be primary applicants
The 2022 data show that 1,215,200 women immigrants came to Canada as secondary applicants under an economic immigration programme. This means that they are the spouse, partner or dependent of someone who applied to immigrate to Canada as the principal applicant under an economic immigration programme, such as Express Entry. A further 1,194,685 immigrant women entered through family class sponsorship.
Statistics Canada explains that immigrant women who are not principal economic applicants often have more difficulty finding employment due to their lack of proficiency in the official language and the difficulty in having their skills, education or experience recognised.
It also notes that many immigrant women also face gendered barriers, such as labour market discrimination and the gendered division of labour in the family.
According to a Statistics Canada report from September 2022, 45 per cent of immigrant women worked full-time when they were part of a couple with the youngest child between the ages of one and five, compared to 64 per cent of Canadian-born women in the same situation.
To alleviate some of the gendered burdens on women, such as childcare, the Government of Canada is investing more than $27 billion over five years as part of Budget 2021 to build a national early learning and childcare system with the provinces and territories.
A report released last June by TD Economics found that the labour force participation rate of women with children under the age of 6 has increased by 4 percentage points since 2020. This means that approximately 111,000 additional women in Canada have joined the workforce since 2020 as childcare has become more accessible and workplaces have become more flexible with hybrid arrangements.
